Thursday, January 9, 2014

Congratulations to the Schuylkill! It has officially been named Pennsylvania's 2014 River of the Year. The Schuylkill beat out the four other nominated rivers by a landslide, earning 43 percent of the 5,527 votes tallied during a month-long online voting period in November and December. Thank you to everyone who voted!

As the winning applicant, we at the Schuylkill River Greenway Association (which manages the Schuylkill River Heritage Area) will receive a $10,000 leadership grant to fund a year-long celebration. The money will go to support River of the Year activities up and down the entire 128-mile waterway.

We will integrate the River of the Year
message into many of our existing programs, including the Schuylkill River Sojourn;
pedal/paddle events; and a bike tour series on the adjacent Schuylkill
River Trail. Also, POWR and DCNR will work with the us
to create a free, commemorative poster celebrating the Schuylkill as the 2014 Pa. River
of the Year.

"We are elated to have
the Schuylkill be selected as Pennsylvania
River of the Year for
2014,” said Schuylkill River Greenway Association Executive Director Kurt
Zwikl. “We are particularly pleased to be named because in last year's
balloting we lost out by less than two hundred votes."

Last year, the Schuylkill lost to the Monongahela by only 146 votes! This year, we found a lot of support for the Schuylkill as we promoted it for River of the Year.

“We would like to thank the
Schuylkill River Development Corp. and Montgomery
County, who also nominated the Schuylkill
and will partner with us in 2014 to bring some outstanding river
programming to southeast Pennsylvania.
It is a statewide honor to be chosen, and our thanks go out to all of the
individuals and organizations that endorsed us and voted for the Schuylkill," Zwikl said.

We are now working on developing a calendar of River of the Year events that will be posted on our website at www.schuylkillriver.org by early spring.